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Mark Zuckerberg Sticks to His Guns on Political Speech

Mark ZuckerbergCredit...Riccardo Savi/Getty Images For Facebook

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Mark Zuckerberg pushed back against his critics yesterday and defended the social network’s policy of not policing political speech, Cecilia Kang and Mike Isaac of the NYT report.

Mr. Zuckerberg said that “Facebook had been founded to give people a voice and bring them together, and that critics who had assailed the company for doing so were setting a dangerous example,” Ms. Kang and Mr. Isaac write.

“People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a Fifth Estate alongside the other power structures of society,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his 35-minute speech at Georgetown University, in which he invoked Frederick Douglass, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War and the First Amendment.

The address was an unusually public doubling down by the tech billionaire on a free speech stance that has been highly criticized. “It was a sign of how Mr. Zuckerberg was trying to reposition Facebook in a politicized environment where the company had been accused of amplifying disinformation, hate speech and violent content,” Ms. Kang and Mr. Isaac write.

The speech did little to quell criticism of the company. “Facebook is actively helping Trump spread lies and misinformation,” Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted last night. “Facebook already helped elect Donald Trump once. They might do it again — and profit off of it.”

More: Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, is backing a $10 million “anti-monopoly fund.”

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A suitcase factory in Shanghai.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

The country disclosed today that its economy grew just 6 percent in the third quarter, Keith Bradsher of the NYT reports. That promises further pain for Beijing — and the rest of the world, too.

The growth rate is China’s slowest pace in nearly three decades of modern record-keeping, Mr. Bradsher notes. The pace is at the low end of Beijing’s official economic growth target.

There are several factors to blame:

• The trade war with the U.S., which is still raging despite recent breakthroughs in negotiations between Washington and Beijing

• Slumps in the country’s huge automotive and real estate sectors

• A swine fever epidemic that has decimated its pig population

A slowdown was inevitable, but this is more than economists had anticipated. Analysts had expected a growth rate of about 6.1 percent, according to the FT.

That has consequences for the global economy. The I.M.F. had said earlier this week that worldwide growth would fall to its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

China has its work cut out to find a solution. “The biggest challenge is to find new growth drivers from consumption and technology, as old ones such as property and globalization are fading out,” Larry Hu, the head of China economics at Macquarie, told the NYT.

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Oil tanks at a Saudi Aramco facility.Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

The state-owned oil giant is said to have pushed back its initial public offering, creating another setback for what would be the biggest-ever stock market debut.

Aramco had been expected to announce its I.P.O. plans on Sunday, and then publish the offering prospectus around Oct. 25. The current plan is to list up to 3 percent of the company’s shares on the local Tadawul exchange.

The company reportedly wants to incorporate third-quarter financial results into its offering materials, unnamed sources told the WSJ. It also wants more data to reassure the markets that operations have returned to normal after drone attacks on its facilities last month.

Some prospective investors had pushed back against the I.P.O. process, according to the WSJ. Executives from Fidelity Investments were reportedly dissatisfied with the level of financial disclosure offered up by Aramco executives.

It’s the latest delay in what has been a drawn-out process. The Saudi government had already paused Aramco’s I.P.O. process once before, instead pushing the company to buy control of a state-owned chemical producer.

And some questions about the I.P.O. plans remain unanswered, including whether the Saudi government would accept a valuation for Aramco of less than $2 trillion. People with knowledge of the planning have said that the company would most likely be valued by investors at closer to $1.5 trillion.

Investors were briefly elated yesterday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain struck a deal with the E.U. over leaving the bloc. But they have since grown worried that the agreement may be rejected by British lawmakers.

European businesses cautiously welcomed news of the deal, but aren’t willing to resume investment plans that they had suspended because of uncertainty over Brexit. “We’re not at the end of the process,” a spokesman for the French carmaker PSA Group told the WSJ.

Analysts said that the plan wasn’t much different from a no-deal Brexit, and would reduce British income per capita by an estimated 2.5 percent compared with staying in the E.U., according to the research group U.K. in a Changing Europe. (Britain’s finance minister, Sajid Javid, has rejected calls for an official assessment of the economic impact of the agreement.)

There is plenty of opposition in Parliament:

• Mr. Johnson’s allies in the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland said they could not accept the proposal in its current form, since it would separate the territory from the rest of Britain.

• A group of hard-line Conservative lawmakers signaled they may back the Unionist Party.

• And opposition parties, including Labour and the Liberal Democrats, appear determined to deal Mr. Johnson another defeat.

Yet Mr. Johnson may seize a political victory even if he loses, since he could blame lawmakers for rejecting a deal. He would make that argument in a general election, hoping to regain a majority in Parliament.

The British pound went on a wild ride yesterday, rising to nearly $1.30 before falling to around $1.27. As of this morning, it traded at about $1.28.

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Union workers from the idled G.M. plant in Lordstown, Ohio.Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

U.A.W. representatives voted to approve a tentative agreement with General Motors yesterday, but the monthlong strike won’t end until rank-and-file workers have a vote, Neal Boudette of the NYT writes.

The four-year deal includes wage increases and a pathway to full-time employment for temporary workers. It also eliminates a system in which workers receive different pay for equivalent jobs, based on when they were hired.

But the deal will not address a previous sticking point: reopening plants and bringing jobs back to the U.S. from Mexico. Under the agreement, production will continue at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which G.M. had previously planned to close. Three plants that have already closed will not reopen, though displaced workers will receive retirement incentives.

The walkout will continue for at least a week. The 49,000 members of U.A.W. at G.M. plants will get a chance to vote, starting tomorrow.

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Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, and Robin Roberts, a broadcast anchor.Credit...Brian Ach/Getty Images for Time 100 Health Summit

The Chinese government asked the N.B.A. to fire the Houston Rockets executive who tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters, the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver said yesterday, according to Sopan Deb of the NYT.

“We said there’s no chance that’s happening,” Mr. Silver said. “There’s no chance we’ll even discipline him.”

The league was caught in a firestorm earlier this month after Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted in support of protesters in Hong Kong. The N.B.A defended his right to free speech.

Mr. Silver said the financial fallout has “already been substantial” for the league, but he continued to defend its decision not to discipline Mr. Morey. “We wanted to make an absolutely clear statement that the values of the N.B.A., these American values — we are an American business — travel with us wherever we go,” Mr. Silver said. “And one of those values is free expression.”

He also stood up for Joe Tsai, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets and a co-founder of Alibaba, who had criticized Mr. Morey and the Hong Kong protesters. “I thought that’s perfectly appropriate, too,” Mr. Silver said.

It’s unclear what the dust-up will mean for the N.B.A.’s future in China. For now, its games remain off the air there. “I felt we had made enormous progress in terms of building cultural exchanges with the Chinese people, and I have regret that much of that was lost,” Mr. Silver said. “And I’m not even sure where we’ll go from here.”

Robin Daniels reportedly plans to step down as WeWork’s chief marketing officer.

David Warren plans to retire as C.F.O. of the London Stock Exchange Group by the end of 2020.

Bank of America hired Gary Howe from Lazard as a co-head of its AMRS financial institutions group, focusing on banks. It also hired Scott Langley from the National Bank of Canada as an investment banker covering metals and mining companies in Canada.

Deals

• AT&T is said to be in talks with Elliott Management to settle the hedge fund’s activist shareholder campaign, which could include reviewing potential sales of assets or changing up its board. (WSJ)

• Goldman Sachs is reportedly selling its 49 percent stake in a Puerto Rican toll road operator, and a deal could value the business at about $2 billion. (Bloomberg)

• American boutique investment banks are reportedly planning big hiring pushes in Paris to expand their European operations as part of their Brexit preparations. (Reuters)

• Galileo Financial, a start-up that helps process online consumer purchases, has raised $77 million in a Series A fund-raising round led by Accel. (TechCrunch)

Trump impeachment inquiry

• Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said yesterday that the Trump administration withheld military aid to Ukraine to advance President Trump’s political interests. Then he tried to walk that back. (NYT)

• Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the E.U., told House investigators that Mr. Trump delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Rudy Giuliani. (NYT)

• Energy Secretary Rick Perry will resign, as his role in the Ukraine scandal draws scrutiny. (NYT)

Politics and policy

• The U.S. will host the next Group of 7 meeting at President Trump’s Doral resort near Miami, raising questions about whether that represents a conflict of interest. (NYT)

• Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York will serve as acting chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, after the death of Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland. (NYT)

• Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic adviser, made an unsubstantiated accusation that Fed officials were part of the so-called deep state. (Business Insider)

Tech

• Airbnb’s losses more than doubled in the first quarter, according to previously unreleased data. (Information)

• Facebook announced a two-year project to ensure child safety as the social network moves to adopt end-to-end encryption for its messaging apps. (FT)

• Fitbit and Bristol-Myers Squibb-Pfizer Alliance are partnering on a wearable device to take on the Apple Watch. (Reuters)

• Where Dyson’s plans for an electric car went wrong. (Bloomberg)

Best of the rest

• Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s C.E.O., was already scheduled to testify before the House. He may have to face the Senate, too. (NYT)

• Douglas Hodge, the former C.E.O. of Pimco, will plead guilty in the college-admissions scandal. (WSJ)

• President Trump joined the chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton at the opening of a new Louis Vuitton workshop in Texas. (NYT)

• How climate change is affecting the wine industry. (NYT)

• Juul will suspend online sales of flavored e-cigarettes. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week.

You can find live updates throughout the day at nytimes.com/dealbook.

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